



Wy^ 

*Si 

> 



/^\fTOF^ITr\T T\ 

OuSEHOLD 



PC T Q 
il s o 



TrfEOPfilLE G/5UTIER 



/? 



OS CALIF. LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES 




THE FALSE CAGNOTTE. 



THEOPHILE GAUTIER. 



MY 

HOUSEHOLD OF PETS. 



BY SUSAN COOLIDGE. 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS. 




BOSTON: 
ROBERTS BROTHERS. 

1882. 



Copyright, 188S, 
BY ROBERTS BROTHERS. 



UNIVERSITY PRESS: 
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. OLD TIMES 5 

II. THE WHITE DYNASTY 23 

III. THE BLACK DYNASTY 43 

IV. OUR DOGS 66 

V. CHAMELEONS, LIZARDS, AND MAGPIES . . 100 

VI. HORSES 119 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



THE FALSE CAGNOTTE Frontispiece 

AS FOR THE EYES OF THE CAT, THEY WERE 
RIVETED ON THE BlRD WITH A FASCINATED 

INTENSITY 17 

THE WHITE DYNASTY 23 

PIERROT 29 

THE BLACK DYNASTY 43 

LEAVE is GIVEN HER TO PLACE HER FOREPAWS ON 

THE EDGE OF THE TABLE 57 

OUR DOGS 67 

MONSIEUR WAS STUDYING HIS LESSON .... 81 
WHEN PAYING LITTLE ATTENTIONS TO HIS LADY- 
LOVES HE STOOD ALWAYS ON HIS HlND-LEGS . 85 

THE CHAMELEON 101 



MY HOUSEHOLD OF PETS. 



CHAPTER I. 

OLD TIMES. 

/CARICATURES are in existence 
which represent us clothed in Turk- 
ish fashion, sitting cross-legged on cush- 
ions, and surrounded by cats, who are 
fearlessly climbing over our shoulders and 
even upon our head. Caricature is noth- 
ing more than the exaggeration of truth ; 
and truth compels us to own that for 
animals in general, and for cats in par- 
ticular, we have, all our lives long, had 
the tenderness of a Brahmin or of an 
old maid. The illustrious Byron carried 
a menagerie of pets about with him even 



6 My Household of Pets. 

when on his travels, and raised a tomb 
at Newstead Abbey to his faithful New- 
foundland, " Boatswain," which bears an 
epitaph of the poet's own composition. 
But although we thus share his tastes, 
we must not be accused of plagiarism ; 
for in our case the tendency manifested 
itself even before we had begun to learn 
the alphabet. 

We are told that a clever man is about 
to prepare a " History of Educated Ani- 
mals ; " so we offer him these notes, from 
which, so far as our animals are con- 
cerned, he will be able to extract reliable 
information. 

Our earliest recollections of this nature 
date back to our arrival in Paris frtm 
Tarbes. We were then precisely three 
years of age, a fact which renders diffi- 
cult of belief the statements of MM. de 
Mirecourt and Vapereau, who assert, that 
at that time we had already " received a 



Old Times. 7 

bad education " in our native city. A 
homesickness of which one would hardly 
believe so young a child to be capable 
took possession of us. We could speak 
only in patois, and those who expressed 
themselves in French seemed to us like 
foreigners and aliens. In the middle of 
the night we would wake up and discon- 
solately ask if we might not soon be al- 
lowed to go back to our own country. 

No dainty could tempt us to eat. No 
plaything gave amusement. Drums and 
trumpets even, failed to rouse us from 
our melancholy. Among the things most 
mourned over was a dog named Cagnotte 
who had necessarily been left behind. His 
absence produced such wretchedness that, 
one morning, after having thrown out 
of window our tin soldiers, a German 
village painted in gaudy colors, and our 
reddest of red fiddles, we were on the 
point of following by the same road in 



8 My Household of Pets. 

hopes of finding the sooner Tarbes, Gas- 
cony and Cagnotte, and were only dragged 
back in the very nick of time by the collar 
of our jacket. The happy thought oc- 
curred to Josephine, our nurse, to tell us 
that Cagnotte, impatient at being sepa- 
rated from us, was coming to Paris that 
very day in the diligence. Children ac- 
cept the incredible with an artless faith ; 
nothing seems impossible to their minds ; 
but it is dangerous to deceive them, for 
once their opinions are formed the at- 
tempt to alter them is hopeless. All that 
day long we asked every quarter of an 
hour if Cagnotte had not come yet. At 
last, to pacify us, Josephine went out and 
bought on the Pont Neuf a little dog who 
somewhat resembled the dog of Tarbes. 
At first we were mistrustful, and would 
not believe him to be the same; but we 
were assured that travelling produces 
strange changes in the looks of dogs. 



Old Times. 9 

This explanation was satisfactory, and the 
dog of the Pont Neuf was received as the 
authentic Cagnotte. He was an amiable 
dog, gentle and pretty. He licked our 
cheeks amicably, and his tongue conde- 
scended to stretch farther and extend it- 
self to the bread-and-butter which had 
been cut for our luncheon. The best 
understanding existed between us. In 
spite of this, the false Cagnotte little by 
little became sad, dull, and constrained in 
his motions. He no longer curled himself 
up easily for a nap ; all his joyous agility 
vanished; he panted for breath, and ate 
nothing. One day, when caressing him, 
we discovered on his stomach what ap- 
peared to be a seam, tightly stretched as 
if swollen. The nurse was called; she 
came, she cut a thread with the scissors, 
and lo! Cagnotte, emerging from a sort 
of jacket of curly lamb's-wool with which 
the dealers on the Pont Neuf had invested 



io My Household of Pets. 

him in order that he might pass for a 
poodle, stood revealed in all his poverty 
and ugliness as a common street cur, ill- 
bred and valueless. He had grown fat, 
and his tight garments were suffocating 
him. Relieved from his cuirass, he shook 
his ears, stretched his legs, and gambolled 
joyfully round the room, not at all dis- 
quieted at his own ugliness, now that he 
once more found himself at ease. His 
appetite came back, and in his moral qual- 
ities we found compensation for his loss 
of good looks. In the companionship of 
Cagnotte, who was a true child of Paris, 
we forgot by slow degrees Tarbes and the 
high mountains which we had been used 
to see from our windows. We learned 
French, and we also became Parisian. 

Let no one suppose that this is an im- 
aginary tale invented to amuse the reader. 
The facts are strictly true, and they show 
that the dog-merchants of that period were 



Old Times. 1 1 

as ingenious as are the jockeys of to-day 
in disguising their wares to cheat unsus- 
pecting country-folk. 

After the death of Cagnotte our affec- 
tions turned to' cats as more truly domestic 
animals and better friends for the fireside. 
We will not attempt to give a detailed his- 
tory of all of them. Whole dynasties of 
felines, as numerous as those of the Egyp- 
tian kings, succeeded one another in our 
house ; accident, death, escape, in turn 
carrying them away. All were loved, and 
all were regretted ; but life is made up of 
forgettings, and the remembrance of de- 
parted cats is gradually effaced like the 
remembrance of men. 

It is a sad fact that the lives of these 
humble friends, our inferior brothers, are 
not better proportioned to those of their 
masters. 

After briefly alluding to an old gray cat, 
who took our part against our own flesh 



1 2 My Household of Pets. 

and blood, and bit our mother's ankles 
whenever she scolded or seemed about to 
punish us, we pass on to Childebrand, a 
cat belonging to the days of romance. 
From his name the reader will detect the 
secret desire which we felt to dispute 
Boileau, whom at thai time we did not 
love, though since we have made peace 
with him. Does he not make Nicolas 
say: 

" Oh charming thought of poet, most ignorant and bland, 
Among so many heroes to choose out Childebrand " ? 

It did not seem to us that it argued 
such a depth of ignorance to select a hero 
of whom no one knew anything. Beside 
Childebrand struck us as an impressive 
name ; very long-haired, very Merovingian, 
Gothic and Mediaeval to the last degree, 
and much to be preferred to a Grecian 
name, be it Agamemnon, Achilles, Idom- 
eneus, Ulysses, or any other. These 



Old Times. 13 

names, however, were the fashion of the 
day, especially among young people ; for 
to use a phrase taken from the notice of 
Kaulbach's frescoes on the outside of the 
Pinacothek at Munich " Never did the 
Hydra of wigginess dress more bristling 
heads than at that period ; " and persons of 
a classical turn doubtless gave their cats 
such names as Hector, Ajax, or Patrocles. 
Our Childebrand was a magnificent cat of 
the house-tops, with shaven hair, striped 
fawn-color and black like Saltabadil's clown 
in " Le Roi s'Amuse." His great green 
eyes of almond shape, and his velvet, 
striped coat, gave him a resemblance to 
a tiger, which we found extremely pleas- 
ing; for, as we have elsewhere said, cats 
are nothing more than tigers under a 
cloud. Childebrand has the honor to fig- 
ure in some verses of ours, also intended 
for the discomfiture of Boileau: 



14 My Household of Pets. 

Then I for you will paint that picture of Rembrandt 
Which pleases me most greatly ; and meanwhile Childe- 

brand, 

According to his custom soft couched upon my knee, 
Lifts up his pretty head and watches anxiously 
The movement of my finger, which traces in the air 
The outline of the picture to make it clear and fair. 

Childebrand came in nicely as a rhyme 
to Rembrandt ; for this fragment was a sort 
of confession of faith and romance to a 
friend, since dead, who at that time shared 
all our enthusiasms for Victor Hugo, Sainte- 
Beuve, and Alfred de Musset. 

We must say of our cats as said Ruy 
Gomez de Silva to the impatient Don 
Carlos, when giving him the names and 
titles of his ancestors, which began with 
" Don Silvius, three times elected Consul 
of Rome," " I have skipped some of the 

best ," and so pass on to Madame Theo- 

phile, a reddish cat, with a white breast, 
pink nose, and blue eyes, who was thus 
named because she lived with us in an 



Old Times. 15 

almost conjugal intimacy, sleeping on the 
foot of our bed, or on the arm of our writ- 
ing chair ; following us in our walks in the 
garden, assisting at our meals, and not in- 
frequently intercepting the morsels which 
we were conveying from our plate to our 
mouth. 

One day a friend, who was leaving- home 
for a short time, left in our charge a favor- 
ite parrot. The bird, feeling lonely in a 
strange house, climbed by the help of his 
beak to the top of the perch, and sat there 
rolling about in a scared way his eyes, 
which glittered like gilt nails, and wrink- 
ling over them the white membranes which 
served for eyelids. Madame Theophile 
had never before encountered a parrot, and 
the novelty awoke in her mind an evident 
astonishment. Motionless as an Egyptian 
cat embalmed in its network of bandages, 
she sat regarding the bird with an air of 
profound meditation, and putting together 



1 6 My Household of Pets. 

all the ideas of natural history which she 
had been able to collect during her excur- 
sions on the roofs or in the courtyard and 
garden. The shadows of her thoughts 
flitted across her changeful eyes, and it 
was not difficult to read the decision at 
which she finally arrived : " This is de- 
cidedly it is a green chicken ! " 

This conclusion reached, the cat jumped 
from the table which she had chosen as 
her observatory, and crouched in a corner 
of the room, her belly on the floor, her 
knees bent, her head lowered, her spine 
stiffened like that of the black panther 
in Gerome's picture as it glares at the 
gazelles who are drinking by the lake. 

The parrot followed each movement of 
the cat with a feverish disquietude. His 
feathers bristled ; he rattled his chain, 
raised one of his claws and exercised its 
talons, while he whetted his beak on the 
edge of the feeding cup. Instinct revealed 






AS FOR THE EYES OF THE CAT THEY WERE RIVETED 
ON THE BIRD'WITH A FASCINATED INTENSITY. 



Old Times. 19 

to him that this was an enemy who was 
plotting mischief. 

As for the eyes of the cat, they were 
riveted on the bird with a fascinated inten- 
sity, and said plainly as eyes could speak, 
and in a language which the parrot under- 
stood only too well, " Green though he be, 
this chicken is without doubt good to eat." 

While we watched this scene with inter- 
est, ready to interfere whenever it should 
seem necessary, Madame Theophile was 
imperceptibly drawing nearer to her prey. 
Her pink nose quivered, her eyes were 
half shut, her elastic claws projected and 
then disappeared again in their velvet 
sheaths. Little shivers ran down her spine : 
she was like an epicure as he seats himself 
at table before a dish of truffled chicken, 
and smacks his lips in advance over the 
choice and succulent repast which he is 
about to enjoy. This exotic dainty tickled 
all her sensuous capabilities. 



2O My Household of Pets. 

Suddenly her back curved like a bow 
which is bent, and with one strong elastic 
bound she alighted on the perch. The 
parrot, seeing his danger, remarked in a 
deep bass voice, as low and solemn as that 
of M. Joseph Prudhomme, " Hast thou 
breakfasted, Jacquot ? " 

This remark created in the mind of the 
cat an evident dismay. She took a sud- 
den leap backward. A blast from a trum- 
pet, a pile of plates crashing to the floor, 
a pistol shot close to the ear, could not 
have inspired more sudden and giddy 
terror in an animal of her race. All her 
ornithological ideas were in one fell mo- 
ment overturned. 

" And on what ? On the roast beef of 
the king ? " continued the parrot. 

The face of the cat now said, as dis- 
tinctly as words, " This is not a bird. It 
is a gentleman ! He speaks ! " 



Old Times. 21 

"When I on wine have feasted free, 
The tavern turns around with me," 

sang the bird in a tremendous voice ; for 
he perceived that the alarm caused by his 
words was his readiest means of defence. 
The cat cast a questioning glance toward 
us, and, getting no reassurance in reply, 
took refuge under the bed, from which 
place of safety she could not be enticed for 
the remainder of that day. 

People who are not accustomed to live 
with animals, or who, like Descartes, see 
nothing in them but irrational organisms, 
will no doubt suppose that these designs 
and reflections which we attribute to birds 
and beasts, are pure inventions of our 
fancy. In this they are mistaken : we 
but interpret their ideas, and faithfully 
translate them into human speech. 

Next day Madame Theophile, regaining 
courage, made another attempt on the par- 
rot, which was repulsed in the same way. 



22 My Household of Pets. 

After that she gave it up, and accepted the 
bird as a man. 

This sensitive and charming animal 
adored perfumes. Patchouli, the scent of 
cashmeres, threw her into ecstasies. She 
had also a taste for music ; perched upon 
a pile of score, she would listen attentively 
and with evident pleasure to vocalists who 
came to test their voices at our piano and 
receive criticism. Sharp notes, however, 
made her nervous, and at the upper " la " 
she was apt to close the mouth of the 
songstress with a tap of her little paw. It 
was an experiment which caused us much 
amusement, and was unfailing. Our feline 
amateur never mistook the note, and never 
let it pass unrebuked. 




THE WHITE DYNASTY. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE WHITE DYNASTY. 

ET us now come down to a more 
modern epoch. From a cat im- 
ported by Mademoiselle Aita de la Pen- 
uela, a young Spanish artist whose studies 
of white Angoras adorned and still adorn 
the windows of the print-shops, we obtained 
the tiniest possible kitten, which looked 
like one of those puffs of swan's-down 
which people use in rice-powder boxes. 
On account of this immaculate whiteness, 
he received the name of Pierrot, which, as 
he grew larger, was amplified into that of 
Don Pierrot de Navarre, a name infi- 
nitely more majestic and having a savor of 
real grandeur about it. Don Pierrot, like 



26 My Household of Pets. 

all animals who are petted and spoiled 
grew up charmingly amiable. He shared 
our family life with that enjoyment which 
cats find in being admitted to the intima- 
cies of the fire-side. Seated in his wonted 
place beside the fire, he seemed always to 
understand the conversation and to be in- 
terested in it. He followed the eyes of the 
talkers, emitting from time to time a little 
mew, as if he too had objections to make, 
and would like to add his opinion on the 
literary topics which were usually the 
theme of our discourse. He adored books ; 
and whenever he found one lying open on 
the table he would seat himself by it, look- 
ing earnestly at the pages, and sometimes 
gently turning one with his claw. He usu- 
ally finished by going to sleep, as soundly 
as though he had in reality been reading 
a modern novel ! 

When we sat down to write he always 
jumped upon the writing-table, and watched 



The White Dynasty. 27 

with a profound attention the point of the 
steel pen as it scattered flies' legs over the 
white surface of the paper, making a little 
movement of his head at the beginning of 
each new line. Sometimes he took a fancy 
to join in the work, and would try to get 
the pen away from us, doubtless with the 
intention of using it in his turn ; for he 
was an aesthetic cat, like the cat Murr, de- 
scribed by Hoffman, and we strongly sus- 
pected him of spending nights in some 
hidden gutter writing his memoirs by the 
light of his own phosphoric eyes. Unfor- 
tunately these lucubrations, if they ever 
existed, are forever lost. 

Don Pierrot de Navarre would never set- 
tle himself to sleep till we had come home. 
He always waited just inside the door, 
and, the moment we stepped into the ante- 
chamber, rubbed himself against our legs, 
arching his back, and purring in a joyous 
and friendly manner. Then he would 



28 My Household of Pets. 

walk in, preceding us like a page, and no 
doubt with a very little urging would 
have consented to carry the candlestick. 

Having thus conducted us to our bed- 
room, he waited till we were undressed, and 
then, jumping into bed, embraced our neck 
with his little paws, rubbed his nose against 
ours, and licked us with a small pink 
tongue, rough as a file, uttering meanwhile 
short, inarticulate cries, which expressed as 
clearly as possible his joy at our return. 
Then, having expressed his affection by 
these demonstrations, and the hour for 
sleep being come, he would mount the 
head-board of the bed, and slumber there, 
poised like a bird on a bough. As soon 
as we awoke in the morning he would de- 
scend, and, stretching himself out close to 
us, wait quietly till it was time to get up. 

Midnight, in his opinion, was the hour 
at which it was our duty to return to the 
house. Pierrot and the concierge were 







PIERROT. 



The White Dynasty. 31 

entirely of one mind on this point. Just 
then we had joined with a few friends in 
getting up a little club, which we called 
" The Society of the Four Candles," from 
the fact that the room in which we met 
was lighted by four candles in silver can- 
dlesticks, which were placed on four cor- 
ners of a table. Sometimes the talk became 
so engrossing that, like Cinderella, we for- 
got the hour, at the risk of rinding our 
carriages changed into pumpkins and our 
coachmen into rats. Several times Pier- 
rot waited for our return until two or 
three o'clock in the morning ; then his feel- 
ings were so deeply hurt that he actually 
went to bed without us. This dumb pro- 
test against our innocent irregularities was 
so touching that afterwards we made a 
point of coming in punctually at midnight; 
but Pierrot for a long while retained a 
grudge against us. He wanted proof that 
our penitence was genuine; and not till 



32 My Household of Pets. 

time had convinced him of the sincerity of 
our regret did he again take us into favor, 
and resume his old position inside the door 
of the antechamber. 

A cat's friendship is a hard thing to 
conquer. Cats are philosophical animals, 
sedate, quiet, fixed in their habits, true 
believers in decency and order, and not at 
all given to the bestowing of a thoughtless 
affection. They will be your friends if 
you prove worthy of friendship ; but they 
will never be your slaves. Even in mo- 
ments of tenderness a cat preserves his 
freedom of will, and cannot be made to 
comply with demands which seem to him 
unreasonable. But once he surrenders 
himself to you as a friend, what absolute 
confidence he gives ! what fidelity of affec- 
tion ! He constitutes himself the com- 
panion of your solitary hours, of your 
melancholy, of your work. He will pass 
whole evenings purring on your knees, 






The White Dynasty. 33 

happy in your company, and forsaking 
that of animals of his own species. In 
vain do enticing mews re-echo from the 
roofs, calling him to join one of those cat- 
soirees where juicy red-herrings take the 
place of tea : he will not be tempted away, 
and shares your vigil to the end. If you 
put him on the floor, he jumps back to his 
place with a murmuring noise which is 
like a soft reproach. Sometimes, standing 
near, he looks at you with eyes so full of 
melting tenderness, so loving and so hu- 
man, that you are half-frightened ; for it 
seems impossible that in such a regard 
reason can be lacking. 

Don Pierrot de Navarre had a companion 
of the same race, no less white than him- 
self. All the comparisons which we have 
heaped together in " The symphony in 
white, major" cannot express the idea of 
this immaculate snowiness, which makes 
even the fur of the ermine look yellow. 

3 



34 My Household of Pets. 

This second cat was named Seraphita, in 
honor of Balzac's Swedenborgian romance. 
Never did the heroine of that marvel- 
lous legend radiate a purer whiteness, not 
even when, accompanied by Minna, she 
climbed the icy peaks of the Falberg. 
Seraphita was of a contemplative and 
dreamy disposition. She would lie for long 
hours on her cushion, not asleep, but fol- 
lowing, with an intense expression of the 
eyes, sights which were invisible to com- 
mon mortals. She liked to be caressed; 
but she caressed in return only a favored 
few to whom her hard-won esteem was 
accorded. She loved luxury; and it was 
always upon the softest chair and the piece 
of stuff best calculated to show to advan- 
tage her swan-like fur that we were sure to 
find her. Her toilet took an enormous 
deal of time ; every particle of her fur was 
made glossy each morning of her life. She 
washed herself with her paws; and every 



The White Dynasty. 35 

hair of her coat, carefully brushed with her 
rosy tongue, glistened like new silver. 
Whenever any one stroked her, she in- 
stantly removed all trace of the contact: 
the least untidiness disturbed her. Her 
elegance and distinction were truly aristo- 
cratic: in the cat-world she must have 
ranked as a duchess at the very least. 
She doted on perfumes, plunging her head 
into bouquets of flowers, and nibbling with 
little quivers of satisfaction handkerchiefs 
steeped in odors. She would walk up and 
down the dressing-table sniffing at the 
essence bottles, and would willingly have 
allowed herself to be dipped bodily into 
the scented rice-powder. Such was Sera- 
phita, and never did a cat better justify a 
poetical name. 

About this time two of those counterfeit 
sailors who sell striped table-covers, hand- 
kerchiefs woven of pineapple thread, and 
other foreign commodities, chanced to 



36 My Household of Pets. 

pass through our street at Longchamps. 
They carried in a tiny cage two Norway 
rats, with the prettiest pink eyes in the 
world. White animals were a passion with 
us just then, and we carried this passion so 
far that even our poultry-yard was stocked 
with white cocks and hens. We bought 
the white rats, and had a large cage made 
for them, with interior staircases which 
led to different stories, to dining-rooms, 
sleeping-chambers, and gymnasiums fitted 
up with trapezes. In this cage they were 
happier and better lodged than even the 
rat of La Fontaine in the middle of his 
Dutch cheese. 

These pretty creatures of which so 
many people, for reasons that we cannot 
understand, have a silly fear grew tame 
to an astonishing degree, so soon as they 
became certain that no harm was intended 
them. They allowed themselves to be 
stroked like kittens ; and taking our finger 



The White Dynasty. 37 

between their tiny pink paws, delicate to 
an ideal degree, would lick it in a friendly 
way. They were usually let loose at the 
end of our meals, and climbing on our 
arms, shoulders, and head, would dart in 
and out of the sleeves of our jacket or 
dressing-gown with singular skill and agil- 
ity. The motive of all these exercises, so 
gracefully performed, was to win leave to 
rummage among the remains of the des- 
sert. Placed upon the table, in the twink- 
ling of an eye the pair would make away 
with every walnut or hazel-nut, every dried 
raisin, every bit of sugar, which remained. 
Nothing could be droller than the eager 
and furtive glances which they cast about 
them while doing this, or their look of sur- 
prise when they found themselves on the 
edge of the table-cloth. When a tiny board 
was laid from the cage to the table, they 
would joyfully run across it and store their 
plunder away in their private cupboard. 



38 My Household of Pets. 

The couple multiplied rapidly, until 
whole families of equal whiteness ascended 
and descended the staircases of the cage. 
At last we found ourselves at the head of 
thirty rats, all so much at home with us 
that when the weather was cold they bur- 
rowed in our pockets without the least 
ceremony, and lay there, keeping them- 
selves warm. Sometimes leaving open the 
door of the Ratopolis, we would go up to 
the second floor of the house, and give a 
whistle well known to our pupils. Then 
the tiny crew, who with great difficulty 
could climb from one step of the stairs to 
the other, would swarm upward, clutching 
the rail, pulling themselves along by the 
balusters, following each other in a file 
with the regularity of acrobats, up the steep 
road, down which occasionally one slipped, 
and run to find us, uttering little cries and 
manifesting the liveliest joy. 

We must now confess to an act of bru- 



The White Dynasty. 39 

tality. We had so often heard it said that 
a rat's tail resembled a pink worm and de- 
tracted from the beauty of the animal, that 
at last we selected one from our menagerie, 
and cut off the much-abused appendage. 
The little rat bore the operation well, 
grew up bravely, and became a master rat, 
with a fine pair of moustaches ; but in 
spite of being lightened of the weight of 
his caudal extremity, he was always less 
agile than his companions, was wary in 
gymnastic exercises, and frequently expe- 
rienced a tumble. When the troop ran up 
the staircase, he invariably came last ; and 
he always had the air of an acrobat who 
is testing his tight-rope and is not quite 
sure of his balance. This experiment con- 
vinced us of the usefulness of a tail to rats. 
It holds them in equilibrium as they run 
along cornices and narrow projections. 
When they swiftly turn to right or left 
the tail turns too, serving as a counter- 



4O My Household of Pets. 

poise ; and this is the cause of the perpet- 
ual wiggle which characterizes it. Nature 
seldom makes a superfluous thing, and for 
this reason we should be very cautious in 
trying to improve her handiwork. 

You will doubtless wonder how our rats 
and cats, creatures so totally unsympa- 
thetic, one in fact being the natural prey 
of the other, managed to live together. 
In the most amicable way imaginable. The 
cats never showed their claws to the rats ; 
the rats never exhibited the least fear or 
distrust of the cats. This conduct on the 
part of the cats was thoroughly sincere, 
and never once were the rats called upon 
to mourn the death of a comrade. Don 
Pierrot de Navarre showed the tenderest 
affection for these tiny neighbors. He 
would lie down by the cage for hours to- 
gether, watching them at play. If by acci- 
dent the door of the room was shut, he 
would scratch and softly mew to have it 



The White Dynasty. 41 

opened, that he might rejoin his little white 
friends, who not infrequently would come 
from their cage and go to sleep by his side. 
Seraphita, of a loftier nature than he, and 
not so fond of the musky odor of rats, 
never took part in these games; but she 
did the rats no harm, and suffered them 
to pass before her without once extending 
a claw. 

The end of these rats was strange 
enough. One sultry day in summer when 
the thermometer marked the ordinary heat 
of Senegal, their cage was placed in the 
garden, under the shade of a vine-covered 
arbor ; for they seemed to suffer from the 
heat. A heavy storm came up, with great 
gusts of wind, lightning and rain. The 
tall poplars on the river's bank bent like 
reeds. Armed with an umbrella, we were 
on the point of going out to look for our 
pets, when a vivid lightning flash, which 
seemed to split the very depths of the 



42 My Household of Pets. 

heavens, stopped us on the first step of 
the flight which led from the terrace to 
the garden. A tremendous thunder-clap 
followed, louder than the discharge of a 
hundred cannon. The shock was so vio- 
lent that we were almost thrown down 
by it. 

After this explosion the storm grew a 
little calmer; and hastening to the arbor 
we found the thirty-two rats lying with 
their paws in the air, all killed by the same 
thunderbolt. 

The wire of their cage had without doubt 
attracted the lightning. Thus perished 
together, as they had lived together, thirty- 
two Norway rats, an enviable death, and 
one not often granted by implacable fate ! 




THE BLACK DYNASTY. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE BLACK DYNASTY. 

TAON PIERROT de Navarre, being a 
native of Havana, needed a very 
warm temperature. This temperature was 
provided for him in our rooms ; but about 
the house lay extensive gardens, separated 
by wire fences which offered no difficulties 
to a cat, and which were planted with large 
trees, in whose branches innumerable birds 
twittered and sang. Not infrequently Pier- 
rot, profiting by an open door, would make 
his escape of evenings for the enjoyment 
of a private hunt over the lawns and the 
flower-beds wet with dew. Sometimes he 
had to wait till daylight before he could 
re-enter the house ; for, though he mewed 



46 My Household of Pets. 

under the windows, his signal did not al- 
ways rouse the sleepers within. His chest 
had always been delicate, and one chilly 
night he took a cold, which speedily de- 
veloped into consumption. Poor Pierrot ! 
he became painfully thin after a year of 
coughing. His fur, once so silky, lost its 
gloss, and reminded one of the dull, opaque 
whiteness of a winding-sheet. His great 
transparent eyes looked enormous by con- 
trast with his poor little face. His pink 
nose grew pale, and he dragged his feet 
slowly along his favorite sunshiny wall, 
watching the yellow autumn leaves whirled 
along in spiral flights by the wind, and 
looking as though he were repeating to 
himself the elegy of Millevoye. 

There is nothing in the world more 
touching than a sick animal. It submits 
to its sufferings with such a sweet, sad 
resignation. Everything possible was done 
to save Pierrot. He had a skilful doctor, 



The Black Dynasty. 47 

who stethoscoped him and felt his pulse. 
Asses' milk was ordered, and the poor 
thing lapped it willingly enough from his 
little porcelain saucer. He would lie for 
long hours on .our knees, stretched out, 
and immovable as the shadow of a sphinx. 
We could number his vertebrae with our 
fingers, like the beads of a rosary. When 
he tried to respond to our caresses by 
a feeble mew, it sounded like a death- 
rattle. On the day of his death, as he lay 
panting upon his side, he raised himself 
with a supreme effort and crept toward 
us, opening wide his dilated eyes with a 
look which seemed to claim our help with 
an intense supplication. It said plainly as 
words could say, " Come, save me, thou 
who art a man ! " Then he staggered ; his 
eyes became fixed ; and he fell with a cry 
so desperate, so lamentable, so full of an- 
guish, that we sat transfixed with silent 
horror. He was buried at the bottom of 



48 My Household of Pets. 

the garden, under a white-rose tree which 
still marks the place of his grave. 

Two or three years later Seraphita died 
also, of a mysterious disease against which 
all the resources of science proved un- 
availing. She is buried not far from 
Pierrot. 

With them the Dynastie Blanche be- 
came extinct, but not the family. For of 
this couple, white as snow, were born 
three kittens as black as ink. Explain, 
who can, this mystery. The great excite- 
ment of the day was Victor Hugo's novel 
" Les Miserables." No one spoke of any- 
thing else, and the names of its heroes 
and heroines were in every mouth. Nat- 
urally, therefore, the two male kittens were 
christened Enjolras and Gavroche, while 
their sister received the title of Eponine. 
When very young they acquired a num- 
ber of pretty tricks. Among the rest 
they were taught to run like a dog after 



The Black Dynasty. 49 

a ball made of rolled-up paper, and to 
fetch it back when thrown to a distance. 
Even though the ball were tossed up to 
the cornices of the wardrobes, hidden be- 
hind piles of sheets on a shelf, or dropped 
into a deep vase, they would always dis- 
cover and fetch it safely in their paws. 
Later in life they learned to despise these 
frivolous amusements, and acquired that 
calm and dreamy philosophy which is the 
true characteristic of the cat nature. 

When people first land in one of the 
Southern States of America, the negroes 
they see are to them simply negroes ; they 
cannot tell one from another. So to care- 
less eyes three black cats are three black 
cats, and nothing more. Observant per- 
sons, however, do not make such mistakes. 
The physiognomies of animals differ from 
each other like those of men ; and we never 
had the least difficulty in distinguishing 
between these three faces, all black as the 

4 



50 My Household of Pets. 

mask of Harlequin, and lighted by emerald 
disks with reflections of gold. 

Enjolras, by far the prettiest of the three 
cats, could be identified by his large and 
lion-like head, his well-whiskered cheeks, 
strong shoulders, long back, and a superb 
tail which expanded like a plume. There 
was something theatrical and emphatic 
about him, and he was addicted to poses 
like a favorite actor. His slow and un- 
dulating movements were full of majesty. 
He could be trusted to walk over consoles 
loaded with treasures in china and Venice 
glass, so circumspectly did he order his 
footsteps. He was not much of a Stoic 
in character, and his taste for dainties 
would have horrified his namesake Enjol- 
ras, that sober and pure young man, who 
would doubtless have said to him, as the 
angel did to Swedenborg, " Thou eatest 
too much." This gluttonous turn, which 
was as droll as that of a gastronomic 



The Black Dynasty. 51 

monkey, was indulged ; and Enjolras at- 
tained a size and weight most unusual 
in a domestic cat. The idea occurred to 
us to have him shaved like a poodle, in 
order to complete his resemblance to a 
lion. A mane was left to him, and one 
thick tuft of hair at the end of his tail. 
We will not swear that it was not part of 
the original design to furnish him with 
leg-of-mutton whiskers like those in the 
portrait of Munito. Thus accoutred, he 
looked, it must be confessed, less like a 
lion of the jungle or of the Cape than 
like a Japanese chimera. Never was a 
more absurd whim carried out upon the 
body of a living animal. His hair was 
shaved so closely that it showed the skin, 
which exhibited odd bluish tones, and 
contrasted in the most extraordinary way 
with the blackness of his mane. 

Gavroche, as if to suit with the character 
of his namesake in the novel, was a cat of 



52 My Household of Pets. 

a crafty and furtive disposition. Smaller 
than Enjolras, his agility was most comical 
and surprising. His substitutes for the 
jokes and slang of the Paris gamin were 
capers, somersaults, and ludicrous motions. 
We are forced to confess that, notwith- 
standing these attractive qualities, Gav- 
roche never lost an opportunity of stealing 
out of the parlor in order to join in the 
street or courtyard with vagabond cats, 

"Of any sort of birth, and blood unknown to fame," 

in parties of the most unrefined sort, quite 
forgetting his dignity as a cat from Ha- 
vana: son of the illustrious Don Pierrot 
de Navarre, grandee of Spain of the first 
rank, and of the Marquise Seraphita, whose 
manners were so lofty and disdainful. 
Sometimes by way of a treat he would 
conduct to his porridge-plate some com- 
rade emaciated by famine and all skin- 
and-bone, whom he had picked up during 



The Black Dynasty. 53 

his peregrinations; introducing him with 
all the airs of a condescending prince. 
The poor wretch, with drooping ears, 
sidelong glance, and tail between his legs, 
fearing that his free lunch might at any 
moment be interrupted by the housemaid's 
broom, would gobble down double, triple, 
quadruple mouthfuls, and like Siete-Aguas, 
or Seven Waters, of the Spanish posada, 
make the plate in a few seconds as clean 
as though it had been scrubbed by a 
Dutch housewife to serve as a model to 
Mieris or Gerard Dow. 

Beholding these chosen prote'ges of Gav- 
roche's, that phrase with which Gavarni 
illustrates one of his caricatures frequently 
came into our head: "Fine friends these 
are which you have selected to go about 
with ! " But after all they were only a 
proof of Gavroche's real goodness of heart; 
for he might easily have eaten up every- 
thing himself. 



54 My Household of Pets. 

The cat who bore the name of the in- 
teresting Eponine was more slender and 
delicately made than her brothers. Her 
nose was slightly longer ; her eyes set 
obliquely in the head like those of a Chi- 
nese, were of a green hue like the eyes of 
Pallas Athene, to which Homer invariably 
applies the epithet y\au/c<u7u<?. Her nose 
of a velvety blackness, as finely grained 
as a Perigord truffle ; her moustaches per- 
petually waving, made up a physiognomy 
full of expression. Her superb black fur 
was always in a quiver, and glittered with 
changeful lustres. Never was there a creat- 
ure so sympathetic, nervous, and theatrical 
as Eponine. If you passed your hand 
over her back once or twice in the dusk 
little blue sparks would flash from the 
fur. Eponine attached herself to us as 
devotedly as did the Eponine of the novel 
to Marius; but not being pre-occupied 
with a Cosette, as was that dear young 



The Black Dynasty. 55 

man, we were able to respond to the af- 
fection of this tender and devoted cat, 
who is still the companion of our labors 
and the joy of our suburban hermitage. 
At the sound of the door-bell she runs 
out, receives the visitors, shows them into 
the drawing-room, asks them to sit down, 
talks with them; yes, talks> prattling on 
with murmurs and little cries which are 
not in the least like those which cats 
use to one another, but which resemble 
the speech of men. What does she say, 
do you ask ? She says in the most intel- 
ligible language : " Gentlemen and ladies, 
do not be impatient ; look at the pictures, 
or, if you please, converse with me. Mon- 
sieur will be here soon." When we enter 
she discreetly retires to an easy chair or 
the corner of the piano, and listens to 
the conversation without trying to take 
part in it, like a polite animal who is 
familiar with the habits of good society. 



56 My Household of Pets. 

This charming Eponine has given so 
many proofs of merit, of intelligence, and 
superior social qualities, that by common 
consent she has been elevated to the dig- 
nity of a person ; for there can be no doubt 
that her conduct is governed by a reason 
which is far superior to instinct. This 
dignity gives her the right to eat at table 
like a human being, and not as cats do 
out of a saucer set on the floor in a 
corner. Eponine therefore has her chair, 
which is regularly placed beside our own, 
at breakfast and dinner. In considera- 
tion of her shape and size, leave is given 
her to place her fore-paws on the edge 
of the table. She has also her own plate 
and her own tumbler, but not a fork or 
spoon. She watches the dinner through 
all its courses from soup to dessert, wait- 
ing for her turn to be helped, and alto- 
gether comporting herself with a wisdom 
and decency which we wish that children 




LEAVE IS GIVEN HER TO PLACE HER FOREPAWS ON 
THE EDGE OF THE TABLE. 



The Black Dynasty. 59 

would oftener imitate. At the first tinkle 
of the bell she makes her appearance, and 
when we enter the dining-room there she 
is, already seated on her chair with her 
paws crossed before her on the edge of 
the table ; and she holds up her forehead 
to be kissed precisely as a nice little girl 
does who has been trained to show an 
affectionate politeness towards her parents 
and other elderly friends. 

But there are flaws in the diamond, 
spots even on the sun, shadows upon per- 
fection, and Eponine, it must be owned, 
has an over-passionate love for fish, a 
passion which is shared by cats in general. 
In contradiction to the Latin proverb 

" Catus amat pisces, sed non vult tingere plantas," 

she will dip her paw into water without the 
least hesitation in order to draw out a carp, 
a white bait, or a trout. Fish awake in her 
a sort of frenzy ; and like children who are 



60 My Household of Pets. 

in a state of excitement over the idea 
of dessert, she sometimes looks sulkily at 
the soup, when preliminary observations 
made in the kitchen have assured her 
that there is fish to come, and that the 
cook has no need to expiate a failure by 
falling on his sword, as did the noble 
Vatel. At such times she is left un- 
served, and we say to her coldly, " Made- 
moiselle, a person who is not hungry for 
soup cannot be hungry for fish," and 
the dish is carried pitilessly past under 
her very nose. When matters reach this 
serious stage the dainty Eponine gobbles 
up her soup in all haste to the very last 
drop, despatches every crumb of bread or 
Italian paste, and then turns round and 
looks at us with a proud glance as one who 
has done her duty, and whose conscience is 
henceforth free from reproach. Her por- 
tion of fish is then given her. She eats 
it with the utmost satisfaction, and having 



The Black Dynasty. 61 

tasted of all the other dishes, finishes her 
meal with a glass of water. 

When a dinner-party is projected Epo- 
nine, without seeing the guests, understands 
perfectly well that there is to be company 
that evening. She takes a look at her 
usual place, and, if she notices a knife, fork, 
and spoon beside the plate, she decamps 
without a word and seats herself on the 
piano-stool, which is her chosen refuge on 
such occasions. I should be glad if people 
who deny the possession of reason to ani- 
mals, would explain this fact, apparently so 
simple and yet containing such a world of 
inferences. From seeing beside her plate 
those utensils which man only can use, 
this wise and observant cat argues that, for 
the day, she must yield her place to a 
guest, and she makes haste to do so. She 
never deceives herself about the matter, 
but sometimes, when the visitor is one with 
whom she is on familiar terms, she will 



62 My Household of Pets. 

climb his knee and try to coax a few 
tit-bits out of him by her grace and ca- 
resses. 

But enough of this ; we must not weary 
our readers. Stories about cats are less 
popular than those about dogs. Still, we 
feel obliged to tell the end of Enjolras and 
Gavroche. In some text-books there is 
this sentence : " Sua eum perdidit ambi- 
tio." One might say of Enjolras, " Sua 
eum perdidit pinguetudo " he died of 
his own fat. He was mistaken for a hare 
and killed by some idiotic hunters. His 
murderers, however, perished within a 
twelvemonth, and in the most miserable 
manner. The death of a black cat, that 
most cabalistical of creatures, never goes 
unavenged ! 

Gavroche, seized with a fanatical love of 
liberty, or perhaps with sudden madness, 
leaped out of a window one day, crossed 
the street, climbed the high fence sur- 



The Black Dynasty. 63 

rounding St. James' Church, which stands 
opposite our house, and disappeared. In 
spite of our anxious enquiries no traces 
of him could ever be found. A myste- 
rious shadow hovers over his fate. Thus 
of the black dynasty only Eponine re- 
mains. She is faithful still to her master, 
and to all intents and purposes has become 
an educated cat. 

She has for companion a magnificent 
Angora, of a silver-gray coat which makes 
one think of clouded Chinese porcelain. 
His name is Zizi, which means "Too 
handsome to do anything." This beauti- 
ful creature lives in a sort of contemplative 
stupor like a thekiari during his period of 
inebriation. Looking at him one is re- 
minded of the "Ecstasies of M. Hochener." 
Zizi's passion is music. Not content with 
listening to it, he is himself a performer. 
Occasionally at night when all are sleep- 
ing there breaks upon the silence a strange, 



64 My Household of Pets. 

fantastic melody which Kriesler and the 
musicians of the future might well envy. 
It is Zizi, walking up and down the key- 
board of the piano and enjoying the rap- 
ture of hearing the notes sing under his 
feet. 

It would be unfair not to give a passing 
mention to Cleopatra, the daughter of 
Eponine, who is a charming animal, but of 
too timid a nature to be introduced to the 
public. She is of a deep fawn color, like 
Mummia, the shaggy companion of Atta 
Croll, and her dark green eyes are just like 
two enormous pieces of aqua-marina. She 
walks habitually on three paws, and holds 
the fourth in the air, like the figure of a 
classical line which has lost his marble 
ball. 

This then is the chronicle of the Black 
Dynasty, Enjolras, Gavroche, Eponine. 
recalling to us the creations of a beloved 
master. Only, when we now glance over 



The Black Dynasty. 65 

" Les Miserables," it seems as though the 
principal characters in the romance are 
taken by black cats, but this fact does not 
in the least diminish the interest of the 
story for us. 



CHAPTER IV. 

OUR DOGS. 

\1( 7E have sometimes been accused of 
disliking dogs. This at first sight 
does not seem to be a very grave charge, 
still, we feel bound to justify ourselves, 
since the accusation carries with it a cer- 
tain amount of disgrace. People who pre- 
fer cats to dogs, pass in the eyes of most 
persons as necessarily false, voluptuous and 
cruel ; while dog-lovers are supposed to 
be invariably pure, loyal, open characters, 
gifted, in short, with all the attributes which 
are popularly ascribed to the canine race. 
We could in no wise detract from the 
merits of Medor, Turc, Merot, and other 
equally amiable beasts, and we are quite 
ready to agree with the maxim formulated 




OUR DOGS. 



Our Dogs. 69 

by Charlet : " The best thing which a man 
possesses is his dog." We have owned 
many, we still own some ; and if our cal- 
umniators will kindly call at our residence 
they will be greeted b,y the shrill and furi- 
ous barking of a small Cuban lap-dog, and 
by a large greyhound who will take much 
pleasure in biting their ankles. 

Still, we will not deny that our liking 
for dogs has a strong admixture of fear. 
These animals, excellent, faithful, devoted 
as they are, may at any moment run 
mad, and in that condition they are as 
dangerous and deadly as the viper, the asp, 
the bell-serpent, or the cobra di capello. 
This thought somewhat moderates our 
raptures over them. But, apart from this, 
dogs somehow produce a disquieting effect 
upon us. Their eyes are so deep, so in- 
tense ; they place themselves before us 
with such an interrogative air that it is 
almost embarrassing. Goethe did not like, 



7O My Household of Pets. 

any more than ourselves, this gaze which 
seems to assimilate a man's most secret 
thoughts. He would drive the poor ani- 
mals away, and say to them " You have 
done your best : you shall not devour my 
identity." 

The Pharamond of our canine dynasty 
was named Luther. He was a large white 
pointer with red spots, and handsome 
brown ears, who, having lost his master, 
and searched after him vainly for a long 
time, domesticated himself in the house 
of our parents, who then lived at Passy. 
Having no partridges to hunt he gave 
himself up to the pursuit of rats, in which 
pursuit he became as proficient as a Scotch 
terrier. At that time we were living in a 
room in that blind alley of Doyenne, no 
longer in existence, where Gerard de Ner- 
val, Arsene Houssaye, and Camille Rogier 
had established themselves as the centres 
of a picturesque little Bohemian circle of 



Our Dogs. 71 

artists and literary men, whose freaks and 
eccentricities have been too often de- 
scribed elsewhere to need further men- 
tion now. There, in the very midst of 
the Carrousel, we lived a life as free and 
as lonely as if in some desert isle of the 
ocean, among nettles and blocks of stone, 
under the shadow of the Louvre, and 
close to the ruins of an old church, whose 
crumbling arches presented the most pic- 
turesque effects by moonlight. Luther, 
with whom we had always been on friendly 
terms, seeing us thus take our final flight 
from the family nest, assumed the task of 
making us a daily visit. He left Passy 
each morning at some time unknown, and, 
following the Quai de Billy and the Cours- 
la-Reine, arrived about eight o'clock, just 
as we were waking up. Scratching at 
the door, which was always opened for 
him, he threw himself upon us with a 
joyous yelping, put his fore-paws on our 



72 My Household of Pets. 

knees, received with great simplicity and 
modesty the caresses which his good con- 
duct had earned, made a rapid inspection 
of the room, and then set out on his 
homeward journey. Arrived at Passy, 
he would at once run to our mother, 
wagging his tail and uttering little barks 
which said as plainly as words, " Do not 
be anxious, I have seen the young master, 
and he is well." Having thus given a re- 
port of his self-imposed mission he would 
lap a bowl full of water, eat his porridge, 
and, stretching himself near the easy chair 
of mamma, for whom he had a particular 
affection, would refresh himself by an hour 
or two of sleep after the long journey that 
he had taken. 

Those who hold that animals do not 
think and are incapable of putting two 
ideas together, may explain as best they 
can this daily visit which kept up the 
family relations, and gave to the old birds 



Our Dogs. 73 

in the nest regular news of their recently 
escaped fledgling. 

Poor Luther ! he had a melancholy end. 
He gradually became silent and morose, 
and one day fled from the house, appar- 
ently because he felt himself attacked by 
hydrophobia and feared that he might be 
led to bite his master. We have every 
reason to suppose that he was killed as 
a mad dog. At all events we never saw 
him again. 

After rather a long interval, a new dog 
was installed at the house a dog called 
Zamore. He was half mongrel, half span- 
iel, small in size, and with a black coat, 
excepting for a few spots of flame color 
beneath his eyebrows and some tones of 
fawn color on the belly. He was, in short, 
insignificant in appearance and rather ugly 
than pretty, but so far as moral qualities 
are concerned he was really a remarkable 
dog. For women he had an absolute con- 



74 My Household of Pets. 

tempt; he would neither follow nor obey 
them, and our mother and our sisters tried 
in vain to win from him the least evidence 
of friendship or respect. He would loftily 
accept their attentions and their tit-bits, but 
he never deigned to give them a word of 
thanks in return. No barking for them, 
no drumming of his tail against the floor, 
none of those endearments of which dogs 
are so prodigal. Toward these he main- 
tained always an attitude impassive and 
impassible, crouching in the position of 
a sphinx, like some serious and dignified 
personage who disdains to mix in a frivo- 
lous conversation. 

The master he elected to serve was 
our father whom he recognized in the 
head of the family and a man of weight 
and character. Zamore's tenderness, even 
for him, was of an austere and stoi- 
cal sort, and never expressed by merri- 
ment, or antics, or lickings of the tongue. 



Our Dogs. 75 

But his eyes were forever fixed on his 
master, his head turned to watch each 
slightest movement, and everywhere he 
followed him, his nose close to his master's 
heel, never permitting himself to play the 
smallest prank, or paying the least atten- 
tion to any dog whom they met. This 
dear and lamented father of ours was a 
great fisher before the Lord. The barbels 
caught by him must have out-numbered the 
antelopes caught by Nimrod. It could 
never be said of his fishing-rod that it 
was an instrument with a hook at one 
end and a fool at the other, for he was 
a man full of wit and intelligence, which, 
however, did not hinder his filling his fish- 
basket every day. Zamore always accom- 
panied him on these excursions, and dur- 
ing those long nocturnal watchings, which 
are necessary for the capture of such fish 
as only bite when the line touches bottom, 
he would place himself close to the water's 



76 My Household of Pets. 

edge and seem to explore the darksome 
depths with his eyes, as if searching for 
the prey. Though he now and then 
pricked up his ears at those numberless 
vague and distant sounds which are au- 
dible even in the deepest silence of the 
night, he never uttered a bark, for he 
perfectly understood that it is indispensa- 
ble for a fisherman's dog to be dumb. 
Diana might lift her alabaster brow above 
the horizon and the river give back the 
reflection ; it was all in vain ; not even 
at the moon would Zamore bark, though 
such midnight bayings are among the chief 
pleasures of animals of his species. Only 
when the bell on the fishing-line tinkled 
did he indulge in a yelp, for then he knew 
that the prey was secured, and he took 
intense interest in those after manoeuvres 
which are requisite for landing a barbel of 
three or four pounds weight. 

Who could have guessed that under 



Our Dogs. 77 

this calm and self-contained exterior, so 
philosophical, so far removed from all fri- 
volity, lurked one imperious and extrava- 
gant passion, in utter contradiction to the 
apparent character, moral and physical, of 
this animal so serious and so thoughtful 
that one would have almost called him 
sad? 

What, you say, has this admirable 
Zamore then some hidden vice ? No. 
Was he a thief, a libertine? No. Had 
he a taste for brandy-cherries? No. Did 
he bite? Ten thousand times, no! Za- 
more's passion was for dancing. In him, 
a true Terpsichorean artist was lost to 
the world. 

This vocation was discovered in the 
following manner. One day there ap- 
peared in the public square at Passy a 
grayish ass, one of those luckless donkeys 
belonging to a juggler, which Decamps 
and Fouquet have so successfully painted. 



78 My Household of Pets. 

Two panniers, balanced across his galled 
back, held a troop of trained dogs, cos- 
tumed according to sex as marquises, 
troubadours, Turks, Swiss shepherds, and 
queens of Golconda. The show-man lifted 
out the dogs, cracked his whip, and in- 
stantly all the actors exchanged the hori- 
zontal position for the perpendicular, and 
transformed themselves from quadrupeds 
into bipeds. A fife and a tambourine 
sounded, and the ballet began. 

Zamore, who was strolling gravely past, 
stopped short, astonished at the spectacle. 
These gayly caparisoned dogs, with laced 
seams and clinking ornaments, plumed 
hats and turbans on their heads, and such 
an odd resemblance to men and women, 
seemed to him supernatural beings. Their 
measured steps, their courtesies, their pi- 
rouettes enchanted but did not discourage 
him. Like Correggio before the pictures 
of Raphael, he cried in the canine Ian- 



Our Dogs. 79 

guage, " Anch' io son pittore," " I also am 
a painter," and, seized with noble emu- 
lation as the troop defiled before him in 
a ladies' chain, he raised himself on his 
hind legs which visibly shook, and, to the 
vociferous delight of the bystanders, made 
a movement to join them. But the show- 
man was not so much charmed as the by- 
standers. He gave Zamore a sharp cut 
of his whip and drove him from the circle, 
just as one might expel from the door of 
a theatre a spectator who, during the pro- 
gress of the play, took it into his head 
to climb on to the stage and join in the 
ballet. 

This public humiliation, however, did 
not deter Zamore from following his voca- 
tion. He ran back to the house with his 
tail between his legs and an air of deep 
thought. All that day he was more silent, 
preoccupied and morose than usual. That 
night our two little sisters were roused 



8o My Household of Pets. 

from their sleep by a low, mysterious noise 
which seemed to come from an unoccupied 
chamber next to their own, where Zamore 
was in the habit of passing the night on 
an old arm-chair. The sound was a sort 
of rhythmic stamping, which in the quiet 
of the night sounded louder than it really 
was. At first the children thought that 
it must be the mice giving a ball, but the 
steps and the jumps were too loud and 
heavy for mice. At last the bravest of 
the two crept out of bed, half opened the 
door, and peeped in. What did she see 
by the light of a struggling moonbeam 
but Zamore, erect on his hind legs, beat- 
ing time with his fore-paws, and practising 
as in a dancing class the steps which he 
had so much admired that morning in 
the street. Monsieur was studying his 
lesson ! 

This was not, as might be supposed, a 
random fancy, pursued for one night only. 




MONSIEUR WAS STUDYING HIS LESSON. 



Our Dogs. 83 

Zamore persisted in his Terpsichorean 
aspirations, and in time became an admi- 
rable dancer. Every day, as soon as the 
fife and the tambourine began to sound, 
he ran to the square, glided between the 
legs of the spectators, and with the deepest 
attention watched the trained dogs going 
through with their exercises. Mindful, 
however, of that cut of the whip, he 
never again tried to join in the dance, 
but, noting carefully each step, each move- 
ment, each graceful attitude, rehearsed it 
at night in the privacy of his own room, 
while by day he maintained his usual aus- 
terity of demeanor. After a time, to imi- 
tate no longer sufficed him ; he began to 
invent, to compose new steps, and we are 
bound to say that few dogs have ever sur- 
passed him in this noble accomplishment. 

We ourselves, concealed behind the half- 
open door, have often watched him at his 
practice. He put so much energy and 



84 My Household of Pets. 

fire into his exercise that, morning after 
morning, the huge bowl of water set for* 
his refreshment in the corner of the room 
the night before would be found drained 
of every drop. 

At length the day came when, all his 
difficulties conquered, he felt himself the 
equal of any four-legged dancer in crea- 
tion, and now it seemed only proper to 
remove the bushel which had hitherto 
obscured his candle, and give the world 
the benefit of his talents. 

The courtyard of the house was closed 
on one side by a grating which had open- 
ings wide enough to allow of the passage 
of dogs of an ordinary size. One morning 
fifteen or twenty such friends of Zamore's 
connoisseurs, without doubt, to whom 
he had sent cards of invitation for his de- 
but in the choregraphic art were noticed 
assembling round a level square of earth 
(which the artist seemed to have swept 




WHEN PAYING LITTLE ATTENTIONS TO HIS LADY-LOVES 
HE STOOD ALWAYS ON HIS HIND-LEGS. 



Our Dogs. 87 

clean with his tail), and the performances 
commenced. The audience was enthusi- 
astic, and manifested its approbation with 
bow-wows which sounded extremely like 
the " Bravos ! " of opera-goers. With the 
exception of one old water-spaniel of a 
muddy and degraded appearance, who 
seemed an adverse critic, and yelped out 
something about " sound traditions ignored 
and forgotten," all united in pronouncing 
Zamore the Vestris of dogs and the true 
genius of the dance. A minuet, a jig, 
and a waltz a deux temps were included 
in the programme. Quite a number of 
two - legged spectators joined the four- 
legged ones before the entertainment was 
concluded, and Zamore had the honor 
and satisfaction of being applauded by 
the clapping of human hands. 

After this his habits became so entirely 
those of the dancer that, when paying 
casual attentions to his lady-loves, he stood 



88 My Household of Pets. 

always on his hind legs, making courteous 
little bows and turning out his toes like 
a gallant marquis of the ancien regime; 
nothing was lacking but the plumed opera- 
hat under the arm. 

Except for these occasional interludes 
Zamore's character was as splenetic as 
that of other comic actors, and he took 
no share whatever in the ordinary life of 
the house. He never stirred except when 
he saw his master take his hat and cane, 
and he died finally of brain fever, caused, as 
we supposed, by the over-exertion and ex- 
citement of learning the Schottische, which 
just then came into fashion. From his grave 
Zamore might say, like the Greek dancer 
in the epitaph, " Lie on me lightly, earth, 
for I have very lightly weighed on thee." 

Some may ask why, with such remarka- 
ble talents, Zamore was not engaged as 
one of the troupe of M. Corvi. Even 
then we had sufficient influence as a critic 



Our Dogs. 89 

to negotiate such an arrangement had it 
been desirable. But Zamore would not 
leave his master ; he sacrificed his self-love 
to his love, a devotion which one cannot 
hope very often to find among men. 

Our dancer was replaced by a singer 
named Kobold, a King Charles spaniel 
of the purest breed, brought from the fa- 
mous kennels of Lord Lauder. Nothing 
earthly was ever so like a chimera as this 
droll little creature, with his enormous, 
bulging forehead, his prominent eyes, his 
nose which seemed broken off at the base, 
and his long ears which swept the ground. 
Carried over to France, Kobold, who spoke 
only English, seemed at first to be half- 
stupefied. The orders given were per- 
fectly unintelligible to him. Trained to 
obey " Go on," " Come here," he stood 
motionless and perplexed at the sound of 
"Va"and"Va-t'en." 

It took him a year to learn the language 



QO My Household of Pets. 

of his new country well enough to be able 
to join in conversation. Kobold was very 
sensitive to music, and sang several little 
songs himself, though with a strong Eng- 
lish accent. The key-note was given him 
on the piano, he caught the exact tone, 
and in a flute-like and sighing voice war- 
bled passages which were really musical, 
and bore no relation whatever to barkings 
or yelpings. 

When we wanted him to begin again it 
was only necessary to say, " Sing a little 
more," and he at once recommenced the 
cadence. For a creature brought up in 
the most delicate luxury, and with all the 
care which one would naturally give to a 
tenor and a gentleman of distinction, Ko- 
bold had the most singular tastes. He 
devoured earth like a Digger Indian ; and 
this habit, of which he could not be cured, 
brought on a disease of which he died. 
He had a strong turn for grooms, horses, 



Our Dogs. 91 

and stables in general, and our ponies had 
no comrade more devoted than he. In 
fact, he may be said to have divided his 
time between the box-stalls and the piano. 
From Kobold, the King Charles, we pass 
to Myrza, a small Cuban lap-dog, who at 
one time had the honor to belong to Giula 
Grisi, from whom we received her as a 
present. She is white as snow, especially 
when freshly washed, and before she has 
had time to roll in the dust, a mania 
which some dogs share with a certain kind 
of dusty-winged birds. She is the gentlest 
of animals, very demonstrative, and guile- 
less as a dove. Nothing can be droller 
than her shaggy head, her face composed 
of two eyes as glittering as furniture nails, 
and a little nose which might easily be 
mistaken for a Piedmont truffle. Long 
locks of hair, as curly as Astrakan wool, 
fly about this nose in picturesque confu- 
sion, sometimes getting into one eye, some- 



92 My Household of Pets. 

times into the other, the whole making 
up the most whimsical countenance im- 
aginable, as odd and as unreal as the face 
of a chameleon. 

In Myrza's case nature has imitated art 
with such perfection that any one would 
be ready to swear that she came straight 
from the show-case of a toy-shop. With 
her blue collar, silver bell, and her hair of 
the regulation frizz, she looks exactly like 
a pasteboard dog; and when she barks, 
one instinctively examines her feet to see 
if there is not a tiny squeaking-machine 
fastened under the paws. 

Myrza, who spends three quarters of the 
day in sleep, so that life would seem pretty 
much the same to her if she were in reality 
stuffed, and who under ordinary circum- 
stances is anything but bright, neverthe- 
less gave one day a proof of intelligence 
such as we have never known in any other 
dog. Bonnegrace, who painted those por- 



Our Dogs. 93 

traits of Tchoumakoff and of M. E. H., 
which were so much talked about when 
exhibited, had brought a portrait for us 
to look at, painted after the style of Pag- 
nest, which is so full of vivid color and 
lifelike light and shadow. Although we 
have always lived in such intimate rela- 
tions with animals, and could cite hun- 
dreds of instances in which cats, dogs, and 
birds have proved themselves wise, philo- 
sophical, and ingenious, we are forced to 
admit that the taste for art is totally lack- 
ing among them. We have never seen an 
animal who took the slightest notice of a 
picture, and the story of the birds who 
pecked at the grapes painted by Apelles 
has always appeared to us a pure inven- 
tion. The one essential distinction be- 
tween man and beast seems to be just this 
sense of art and feeling for decoration. 
A dog would be as likely to put on ear- 
rings, as to waste time over pictures. 



94 My Household of Pets. 

Well, Myrza, catching sight of Bonne- 
grace's portrait set up against the wall, 
jumped from the stool where she was ly- 
ing rolled up like a ball, rushed to the 
canvas, and began to bark furiously, try- 
ing to bite the intrusive stranger who 
had entered the room. Her surprise was 
extreme when she recognized the fact 
that she had a flat surface to deal with, 
on which her teeth made no impression, 
and which was only a deceitful show. 
She smelt the picture, tried in vain to get 
behind the frame, looked at us both with 
a questioning expression in her eyes, and 
then went back to the stool and resumed 
her nap, taking no further trouble about 
the gentleman in oil-colors. Her own 
countenance, meanwhile, will not be lost 
to posterity, for a beautiful portrait of her 
is in existence, painted by M. Victor Mada- 
rasz, an Hungarian artist. 

We will conclude our chapter on dogs 



Our Dogs. 95 

with the history of Dash. One day a rag- 
and-bottle man stopped at our door in 
search of scraps of broken glass and old 
bottles. In his cart was a puppy some 
three or four months old, which he had 
been told to drown, an order which trou- 
bled the honest fellow, at whom the puppy 
was casting tender and supplicating looks, 
as if he understood the situation of affairs. 
The reason of the severe sentence passed 
on the poor brute was that one of his fore- 
paws was broken. 

Pity stirred in our heart, and we adopted 
the condemned victim on the spot. A 
veterinary surgeon was sent for, who set 
the leg and put it in splints ; but Dash 
persisted in gnawing off the bandages, so 
that the bones did not unite, and the paw 
remained dangling uselessly, like the sleeve 
of a man who has lost his arm. This in- 
firmity, however, did not hinder Dash from 
being one of the gayest, liveliest, and most 



g6 My Household of Pets. 

alert of dogs ; and he ran on three legs 
quite as fast as was desirable. 

He was the commonest of street dogs, 
a veritable mongrel, on whose breed Buffon 
himself would have been embarrassed to de- 
cide. He was ugliness personified, but pos- 
sessed an expressive face, which sparkled 
with intelligence. Everything that was 
said to him he understood, his expres- 
sion changing according as the words, 
spoken in the same tone of voice, were flat- 
tering or abusive. He rolled his eyes, 
turned up his chops, abandoned himself to 
unrestrained, nervous wriggles, or laughed, 
showing a row of white teeth ; and, in short, 
produced the most comical effect, of which 
he was quite conscious. Very often he 
tried to speak. With paws placed upon 
our knee, he would eye us with an intense 
look, and begin a series of murmurs, sighs, 
and growls, so varied in intonation that it 
was easy to see that they were parts of a 



Our Dogs. 97 

regular language. Now and then, in the 
midst of this conversation, Dash would in- 
terject a sudden and noisy yelp. Then 
we would look severely at him, and say : 
" That is barking, not talking. Can it be 
that after all you are only an animal ? " 
Whereupon Dash, much humiliated by the 
insinuation, would recommence his vocal- 
ization, throwing into it a still more pa- 
thetic expression. No one could doubt 
that at these times he was giving an ac- 
count of his misfortunes. 

Dash adored sugar. He always came 
in with the coffee after dessert, and went 
round the table begging a lump of sugar 
from each person with an urgency which 
seldom failed of success. In the end he 
grew to consider these benevolent gifts in 
the light of a regular tax, which he rigor- 
ously exacted. This cur, in the body of a 
Thersites, carried the soul of an Achilles. 
Disabled as he was, he constantly attacked, 
7 



98 My Household of Pets. 

with the frenzy of an heroic courage, dogs 
ten times as big as himself, and was 
frightfully beaten. Like Don Quixote, the 
brave knight of La Mancha, he set out in 
triumph, and came back in most piteous 
plight. Alas, he fell a victim to this mis- 
taken courage. He was brought home, a 
few months since, torn to pieces by an 
amiable brute of a Newfoundland, who the 
very next day broke the backbone of a 
greyhound. 

The death of Dash was followed by all 
sorts of catastrophes. The mistress of the 
house in which he had received his death- 
blow was burned to death in her bed a 
few days after ; and her husband, in trying 
to save her, met with the same fate. It 
was not an expiation, it was only a fatal 
coincidence, for they were the best peo- 
ple in the world, loving animals like Brah- 
mins, and not in the least to blame for the 
sad fate of our poor Dash. 



Our Dogs. 99 

We have now another dog, who is called 
Nero, but he is too recent an acquisition 
to have a history. 

In the next chapter we propose to give 
a chronicle of the different chameleons, 
lizards, magpies, and other small creatures 
who have made part of our household of 
pets. 

N. B. Alas, Nero is dead! He was 
poisoned a day or two since as thoroughly 
as if he had supped with the Borgias, 
and the first chapter of his life begins 
and ends with an epitaph. 



CHAPTER V. 

CHAMELEONS, LIZARDS, AND MAGPIES. 



/^VNCE upon a time we happened to be 
at the port of Santa-Maria in the 
Bay of Cadiz, a little village which seems 
cut out of the white loaf of Spain, between 
the indigo of the sea and the lapis-lazuli 
of the sky. It was noon, and on that par- 
ticular day such a warm noon that the 
sun appeared to be amusing himself by 
dropping spoonfuls of melted lead on the 
heads of travellers, as the garrison of a be- 
leaguered fortress, by some well-planned 
artifice, pours boiling oil or pitch on the 
heads of its assailants. This picturesque 
little port is made famous by the cele- 
brated song in the Andalusian patois of 




THE CHAMELEON. 



Chameleons, Lizards, and Magpies. 103 

Murillo-Bravo, " The Bulls of Puerto," in 
which the gallant boatman says to the lady 
about to embark, " Lleve V. la patita." 
We hummed the refrain in a voice which 
sings no less falsely in Spanish than in 
French, following with our eyes, as we 
sang, the line, straight as the selvage of 
a piece of linen, which was cast by the 
shadow at the foot of the wall. 

It was a market day, and foreign com- 
modities of all sorts were exposed for sale 
on the square, which were of colors gor- 
geous enough to enchant Ziem himself. 
Garlands of fiery-red peppers swung above 
deep-green melons, some of which had 
been cut in halves to show the rose-col- 
ored pulp within, dotted with black spots 
like a shell from the South Seas. Heavy- 
clusters of clear, yellow grapes, like am- 
ber beads, reminding one by their fair 
transparency of Turkish rosaries, hung by 
the side of bunches of a bluish color, and 



IO4 My Household of Pets. 

others which were of an amethystine hue 
shading into deeper purple. Chickpeas 
in weedy mats rounded their globes of 
paly gold ; pomegranates, bursting their 
rinds, showed caskets of rubies within. 
The fruit-sellers, with their scarlet and yel- 
low capes, their black silk petticoats, bare 
feet thrust into satin slippers, and what 
feet, hardly bigger than a Savoy biscuit! 
their paper fans held against the cheek 
to take the place of a parasol, sat proudly 
beside their vegetables chattering with that 
Andalusian volubility which is so full of 
grace. Here and there some passing gal- 
lant, balancing himself on the point of his 
white cane, his jacket swinging from his 
shoulders, a broad sash from Gibraltar en- 
circling his waist from armpit to hips, his 
elastic breeches open at the knee, and 
leathern boots from Ronda unbuttoned all 
the way up the leg, in what seems to be 
the height of the style, lingered a moment 



Chameleons, Lizards, and Magpies. 105 

to cast a seductive glance while rolling 
between thumb and forefinger his ciga- 
rette of alcoy paper. It was one of those 
blinding effects of southern light and color 
which would be called an exaggeration of 
nature if any artist should attempt to 
reproduce in full its crude and dazzling 
truth. 

We sought a refuge from the fiery sun 
shower in the patio of The Three Moorish 
Kings. A patio, as all the world knows, 
is an inside court surrounded by arcades, 
whose arrangement reminds one of the 
ancient impluvium. In place of a roof it 
is shaded by a linen awning striped with 
gay colors, called in Spanish a velarium^ 
which is kept constantly wet, in order to 
secure greater coolness. In the middle of 
this patio a slender thread of water rose 
and fell from a marble basin, throwing a 
fine spray over boxes of myrtles, pome- 
granates and oleanders, which were grouped 



io6 My Household of Pets. 

about it. Sofas covered with horse-hair, 
and cane-seated chairs, were scattered 
about under the arcades. Guitars, sus- 
pended on the walls, cast brilliant reflec- 
tions out of the shadow, as the light glinted 
on their varnished surfaces, and beside 
them hung the brown disks of tambou- 
rines. 

These patios are common in the Moor- 
ish houses of Algeria, and no better con- 
trivance to secure coolness can be imag- 
ined. They are a device of the Arabs 
adopted by the Spaniards. Upon the capi- 
tals of the smaller columns, in many dwell- 
ings, can still be read verses from the 
Koran glorifying Allah, or laudations of 
some caliph long ago driven back into the 
heart of Africa and forgotten. 

After draining an unglazed jug of cold 
water we retired to one of the rooms open- 
ing on the patio for a siesta. Our drowsy 
eyes wandered to the ceiling of the low 



Chameleons, Lizards, and Magpies. 107 

chamber, which, like all Spanish ceilings, 
was whitewashed, and ornamented in the 
middle by a rosette picked out into yellow, 
black, and red sections like the sides of 
a ball. From this rosette hung a cord 
meant, without doubt, to hold a lamp; 
and along this cord a mysterious object 
was moving upward. We fitted our eye- 
glass into its place under the arch of our 
eyebrow, and at last made out that the 
thing, which with so much pains was 
climbing on the cord toward the ceiling, 
was a kind of lizard, of a grayish yellow, 
and a shape which had about it something 
monstrous, recalling in miniature those 
vast Saurians which disappeared from 
earth at the close of the antediluvian 
epoch. 

The maid of the inn was summoned, 
Pepa, Lola, or Casilda, we cannot recall 
the exact name, but are ready to swear 
that she was an excellent person, and 



io8 My Household of Pets. 

she explained that the creature on the cord 
was a chameleon. 

Lola, if Lola it was, taking pity 
on our ignorance, and perhaps not sorry 
to exhibit her own zoological knowledge, 
said to us in an instructive way, "These 
animals change their color, you know, ac- 
cording to the place where they happen 
to be, and they live on air." 

During our brief conversation the cha- 
meleons (for there were two) continued 
their ascension of the cord. Nothing 
more absurd than their appearance could 
be imagined. It must be admitted that 
the chameleon is not beautiful, and, al- 
though people say that Nature does every- 
thing well, it strikes us that by taking a 
very little more trouble she might easily 
have made a prettier animal than he. But, 
like all great artists, Nature has her ca- 
prices, and she occasionally amuses her- 
self by modelling grotesque shapes. The 



Chameleons, Lizards, and Magpies. 109 

eyes of the chameleon, which are almost 
completely detached from the head, are 
fitted into external membranous sacs, and 
have complete independence of movement. 
They can look to the right with one and 
to the left with the other, cast one up to 
the skies and the other down to the floor, 
producing thereby a variety of squints 
which have the most extraordinary effect. 
A swollen pouch under the jaw, not un- 
like a goitre, gives the poor animal an air 
of haughty complacency and stupid con- 
ceit, of which he is as unconscious as he 
is innocent. His awkwardly formed paws 
make a projecting angle above the line of 
his back, and his movements are alike un- 
graceful and meaningless. 

One of the chameleons had now reached 
the top of the string and the centre of the 
rosette. Putting out a pitiful little paw, he 
tried the ceiling to see if it were possible 
to cling to it, and in that way to effect an 



no My Household of Pets. 

escape. In making this experiment, for 
the hundredth time perhaps, he squinted 
with his eyes in the most desperate and 
touching way, as if invoking aid from 
heaven and earth; then, seeing no hope 
of egress on that side, he slowly began 
to descend the cord again, with a sad, 
resigned, and piteous look, emblem of 
useless labor, a Sisyphus of wasted ener- 
gies. Half-way down the two creatures 
met, exchanged glances meant to be 
friendly, perhaps, but horrible from their 
squints, and for a moment or two formed 
a group which was like a hideous bunch 
on the perpendicular line of the string. 

After a few ludicrous contortions the 
group disentangled, each chameleon con- 
tinuing its journey, the one which was com- 
ing down reaching the end of the cord, 
stretching out a hind leg, sounding the 
air cautiously and finding no place of sup- 
port, drawing it in again with a discour- 



Chameleons, Lizards, and Magpies. 1 1 1 

aged movement whose heart-breaking and 
absurd melancholy baffles all description. 
By one of those associations of ideas which 
cannot be accounted for, but which the 
mind conceives without understanding 
why, the chameleons reminded me of one 
of Goya's gloomiest etchings, in which are 
represented spectres, who, with feeble and 
shadowy arms, are trying to lift heavy 
stones which roll back upon and crush 
them, an unequal conflict of weakness 
with destiny. 

In order to deliver these poor animals 
from their sufferings we bought for them 
a rough sort of cage. It was of good size, 
and, once installed therein, they were able 
to dispense with those acrobatic exercises 
which seemed to make them so miserable. 
As to the question of food, with all re- 
spect for Southern frugality, this living on 
air by its very name seems insufficient. 
A Spanish lover may, perhaps, be able to 



112 My Household of Pets. 

breakfast on a glass of water, dine on a 
cigarette, and sup on a tune from his man- 
dolin ; but the tastes of chameleons are 
less refined, and they crave and devour 
flies, which they catch, in the oddest man- 
ner, by darting out from the throat a sort 
of long lance covered with a viscous slime, 
which adheres to the wings of the insect, 
and, when drawn in again, carries him 
bodily along with it into the gullet. 

Do chameleons change their color ac- 
cording to the place where they happen 
to be ? In the literal sense of the words 
they do not, but their skins, broken by little 
facet-shaped roughnesses, absorb the hues 
of surrounding objects more easily than 
other bodies do. Placed near a red thing, 
or a yellow or a green one, the chameleon 
seems to steep itself in that color, but, 
after all, it is but an effect of refraction. 
A plate of polished metal will be colored 
in the same way ; there is no real power 



Chameleons, Lizards, and Magpies. 113 

of absorption. In its ordinary state the 
chameleon is of a gray-green or a yellow- 
ish gray. However, those who have a 
taste for marvels may, if they like, assert 
that the chameleon changes its color at 
will, and is thus the proper emblem of 
political versatility; but we must be per- 
mitted to say in our turn that after the 
minutest observations, continued for a long 
time, we are convinced that chameleons ' 
are entirely indifferent to affairs of state 
and everything connected with them. 

We were anxious to carry our chame- 
leons home with us, but the autumn was 
near at hand, and, though the sun still had 
a great deal of heat as we followed the 
coast northward from Tarifa to Port Ven- 
dres, passing by Gibraltar, Malaga, Ali- 
cante, Almeria, Valencia, and Barcelona, 
the poor beasts faded away before our very 
sight. As they wasted, their eyes seemed 
to project from their heads, and day by 



H4 My Household of Pets. 

day to increase in prominence. Their 
squint increased ; under their loose and 
flabby skins their tiny skeletons grew more 
and more distinct with every mile. It was 
a piteous sight, these consumptive liz- 
ards feebly going through the death dance, 
and too weak even to thrust their sticky 
tongues out for the flies which we col- 
lected for them in the galley of the 
steamer. They died within a few days 
of each other, and the blue Mediterra- 
nean was their grave. 

From chameleons to lizards the transi- 
tion is easy. Our youngest daughter once 
received the present of a lizard which had 
been caught at Fontainebleau, and which 
became very fond of her. Jacques' color 
was the most beautiful Veronese green 
that can be imagined. His eyes were very 
bright, his scales overlapped each other 
with the most perfect regularity, and his 
movements were extraordinarily swift. He 



Chameleons, Lizards, and Magpies. 1 15 

never left his little mistress, and usually 
lay hidden in a loop of her hair near the 
comb. Nestled there, he accompanied her 
to the play, to walk, to evening parties, 
without once betraying his presence ; only, 
when the young girl was playing on the 
piano, he would desert his retreat, descend 
her shoulder and creep out to the end of 
the arm, always preferring the right hand, 
which plays the air, to the left, which 
makes the accompaniment, thus testify- 
ing to his preference for melody over har- 
mony. 

Jacques' house was a glass box lined 
with moss, which had once contained Rus- 
sian cigars from the Eliseieph manufac- 
tory. His private life may therefore be 
justly said to have lain open to the public. 
His food consisted of drops of milk, which 
he preferred to take from the end of his 
mistress's finger. He died of grief and 
hunger during her absence on a journey, 



n6 My Household of Pets. 

to which she had not dared to expose him 
on account of the severity of the weather. 

There is nothing to be told of Balylas, 
the sparrow, but that he died. One blow 
under his wing, from a claw, finished his 
career, and he was buried in a domino- 
box. 

It now only remains for us to describe 
Margot, the magpie, a most intelligent 
and chatty gossip, worthy to live in an 
osier cage in the window of a concierge 
and be fed with white cheese. We wasted 
much time in trying to teach her the dead 
languages. She never could be taught to 
pronounce correctly the Latin for " Bon- 
jour," as did the Pompeiian magpies. She 
could not say " Ave," but she said a great 
many other things. She was a most comi- 
cal and entertaining bird, who would play 
at hide-and-go-seek with the children, dance 
the Pyrrhic dance, and fearlessly attack any 
number of cats, absolutely running after 



Chameleons, Lizards, and Magpies. 117 

them and nipping the ends of their tails ; 
which malicious act she always supple- 
mented with a loud burst of laughter. She 
was as thievish as the " Gazza Ladra " her- 
self, and equal to getting ten servants hung 
on false accusations. In the twinkling of 
an eye she would rifle every knife, fork, 
and spoon from the table. Money, scis- 
sors, thimbles, anything that glittered, she 
would seize upon and swiftly fly away with 
to her hiding place. As the corner where 
she deposited her stolen goods was well 
known to us all, we allowed her to do this ; 
but the servants of a neighboring family 
were less indulgent, and they killed her 
one day because, as they stated, she had 
stolen a pair of new sheets, an accusa- 
tion which made us think of that minute 
cat in " How to succeed," which devoured 
four pounds of butter and only weighed 
three quarters of a pound after it! The 
master and mistress of the house scouted 



n8 My Household of Pets. 

the idea, and turned the fools of servants 
off at once ; but this reprisal did not mend 
the matter, Dame Margot's neck was none 
the less wrung. She was lamented by 
all the neighborhood, which had been 
kept in a state of constant diversion by 
her good humor and her pranks. 



CHAPTER VI. 

HORSES. 

not be in a hurry to accuse us of 
coxcombry on seeing the heading of 
this chapter. Horses ! a glorious word 
indeed for the pen of a literary man. 
Musa pedestris (the muse goes on foot), 
says Horace, and all Parnassus together 
had but a single horse in its stable, the 
well known Pegasus ; and he, if we may 
believe Schiller's ballad, was a beast with 
wings, and not at all easy to harness. We 
are no sportsman, alas, and we deeply re- 
gret the fact, for we are as fond of horses 
as though we had an income of five hun- 
dred thousand francs a year, and entirely 
agree with the Arabs in their contempt for 



1 20 My Household of Pets. 

people who are forced to walk. A horse 
is the natural pedestal for a man, and the 
perfect existence is that of the Centaur, 
that ingenious mythological invention. 

However, notwithstanding that we are a 
simple man of letters, we once had horses. 
About the year 1843 or 1844, when en- 
gaged in sifting the sands of journalism 
through the sieve of the daily newspapers, 
enough golden particles appeared, to allow 
of the hope that, in addition to dogs, cats, 
and magpies, we might be able to find 
food for a couple of pets of larger size. 
At first it was a pair of Shetland ponies, 
about the size of a large dog, and shaggy 
as bears, who looked at us through their 
long, black manes with such friendly faces 
that we felt much more inclined to take 
them with us into the parlor than to send 
them to their stable. They helped them- 
selves to sugar out of our pockets, just 
like trained horses. For use, however, 



Horses. 121 

they were entirely too small. They would 
have answered very well to carry an Eng- 
lish child eight years old, or as coach 
horses to Tom Thumb ; but, even at that 
date, we were blessed with the same ath- 
letic frame as now, and crowned with the 
same plenteous flesh which still charac- 
terizes us, and which we have been enabled 
to support, without giving way under its 
weight, for forty consecutive years. The 
difference in size between master and 
beasts was quite too apparent to the eye, 
though it must be said for the ponies that 
they made no difficulty at all about draw- 
ing their light phaeton, to which they were 
fastened by a tiny harness of pale fawn- 
colored leather, which looked as though it 
might have been purchased at a toy-shop. 

At that time illustrated comic journals 
were not so plentiful as to-day, but there 
were plenty in existence to caricature us 
and our equipage. Of course, with the 



122 My Household of Pets. 

exaggeration permissible in such cases, we 
were invested with elephantine propor- 
tions, like those of Ganesa, the Indian 
god of wisdom, while the ponies dwindled 
to the size of puppies, or, even less, to 
that of rats and mice. It is true that, with- 
out great difficulty, we might have carried 
the little creatures, one under each arm, 
and the phaeton to boot upon our back. 
For a moment we debated the possibility 
of harnessing four, but this Liliputian four- 
in-hand would have been still more con- 
spicuous. With great regret therefore (for 
we had already grown fond of the gentle 
creatures) we exchanged them for a pair 
of dappled-gray ponies of a larger size, 
with strong necks, wide chests, and mas- 
sive shoulders, which, though far enough 
from being Mecklenburgers, at least 
looked capable of drawing grown people 
about. They were mares, one named 
Jane and the other Betsey. 



Horses. 123 

In appearance they were as much alike 
as two drops of water. Never was a better 
match so far as looks went ; but in propor- 
tion as Jane was mettlesome, Betsey was 
indolent. While the former pulled at the 
collar, the other trotted by her side con- 
tentedly, shirking work, and giving herself 
no sort of trouble. These two animals, of 
the same breed, the same age, fated to live 
in stalls side by side, felt for each other 
the strongest antipathy. They could not 
endure each other, fought in the stable, 
and snapped and bit when prancing in the 
traces. Nothing could reconcile them. It 
was a pity too, for with their brush-like 
manes cut like those of the horses of the 
Parthenon, their snorting nostrils and eyes 
dilated with fury, they presented rather a 
triumphant appearance when going up and 
down the Champs Elysees. 

We were obliged to look for a substi- 
tute for Betsey, and found one in a small 



124 My Household of Pets. 

mare with skin of a somewhat lighter color, 

for the shade we wanted could not be 
exactly matched. Jane approved at once 
of this new-comer, with whom she seemed 
charmed, and did the honors of the stable 
in the most graceful way. The tenderest 
friendship was soon established between 
them ; Jane would rest her head on the 
shoulder of Blanche, thus named be- 
cause her shade of gray bordered on white, 

and when let loose in the courtyard for 
an airing, they would play together like 
dogs or children. If one was driven out 
in single harness, the other, left behind, 
seemed sad, gave signs of feeling lonely, 
and, when far away she heard the hoofs 
of her comrade sounding on the pavement, 
she raised a joyful neighing like the blast 
of a trumpet, to which her approaching 
friend never failed to respond. 

They came to be harnessed with re- 
markable docility, and would go of their 



Horses. 125 

own accord to their proper places on either 
side of the pole. Like all animals who 
are loved and kindly treated, Jane and 
Blanche soon acquired the most perfect 
confidence and familiarity. They would 
follow us about on their hind legs like 
dogs, and when we stood still, put their 
heads on our shoulders to be petted. 
Jane loved bread, Blanche sugar. Both 
of them adored watermelon rind, and 
there was nothing that they would not 
do to obtain these dainties. 

If only men were not so odiously fero- 
cious and brutal as they too often are, 
how happily and good-naturedly animals 
would play about them ! This being, 
who can think, can speak, can do so many 
things which they cannot understand, fills 
their dimly understood thoughts, and is 
for them a perpetual astonishment and 
mystery. How frequently animals look at 
us with eyes which are full of question- 



126 My Household of Pets. 

ings questionings to which we cannot 
reply, as we have not the key to their 
language ! They have a language, never- 
theless, by which, through sounds and in- 
tonations which we scarcely notice, they 
exchange ideas, confused, perhaps, but 
still ideas, such as creatures of their sphere 
of sentiment and action can understand. 
Less stupid in this one instance than our- 
selves, they succeed in learning a few 
words of our idiom, but not enough to 
enable them to talk with us. These words 
are mostly answers to our demands upon 
them, so our intercourse is naturally brief. 
But that animals talk with each other no 
one can doubt who has ever lived familiarly 
with dogs, cats, horses, or any other sort 
of beasts. 

As an example of this, Jane, who by 
nature was perfectly fearless, shying at 
no obstacle whatever, and afraid of noth- 
ing, changed her character after living 



Horses. 127 

for a few months in the same stable with 
Blanche, and began to exhibit sudden and 
unaccountable fears. Her more timid 
companion had, without doubt, told her 
ghost stories at night. At times, when 
dashing along in the dusk through the 
Bois de Boulogne, Blanche would stop 
short and shy sharply to one side as if to 
avoid some phantom, which, invisible to 
us, had appeared to her. Trembling all 
over, with loud breathings, and body cov- 
ered with sweat, she would rear straight 
on end if we tried to make her go on by 
touching her with the whip. Jane could 
not force her to follow, however hard she 
might try. In these cases there was noth- 
ing to be done but to get out, cover 
Blanche's eyes and lead her along for 
a few paces till the vision took flight. 
Jane ended with allowing herself to be 
conquered by these terrors, which Blanche, 
when safely back in her stable, doubt- 



128 My Household of Pets. 

less explained to her in full. We must 
frankly own that when, in the middle 
of a dusky lane checkered by moonlight 
into fantastic lights and shadows, Blanche, 
usually so docile, Blanche, who, to ex- 
cite her into a gallop, needed nothing 
heavier than that whip of Queen Mab's 
which was made of cricket's bone with gos- 
samer lash, planted herself suddenly on 
her four feet as though some spectre had 
seized her bridle, and with unconquerable 
obstinacy refused to move a step forward, 
we could not prevent a cold chill from 
running down our spine. Searching the 
shadow with unquiet glances, we almost 
imagined that we could detect therein 
the ghastly countenance of one of Goya's 
" Caprices," where in reality were only in- 
nocent silhouettes of leafy birch-trees or 
beeches. 

It was one of our great pleasures to 
drive these charming animals ourselves, 



Horses. 129 

and an intimate understanding was soon 
established between us. If we held the 
reins in our hands, it was mainly for 
the look of the thing. The least click of 
the tongue sufficed to guide them to right 
or to left, to make them go slower or bring 
them to a stop. In a very short time they 
learned all our habits. They went of their 
own accord to the newspaper office, to the 
printers, to the editors, to the Bois de Bou- 
logne, to the houses where we dined on 
particular days of the week, all with such 
exactitude that at last it became abso- 
lutely compromising. By consulting Jane 
or Blanche any one could have procured 
the address of our most mysterious visit- 
ing-places. If, while pursuing some in- 
teresting or tender conversation, we forgot 
the flight of time, they would recall it to 
our minds by neighing, and stamping with 
their hoofs under the balcony. 

Notwithstanding the pleasantness of go- 



1 30 My Household of Pets. 

ing about the city in a phaeton with our 
little friends to pull it, we could not help 
sometimes finding the wind sharp and the 
rain cold, when those months came in so 
fitly christened in the Republican calendar 
as " Brumaire, Frimaire, Pluviose, Ventose, 
and Nivose." We therefore purchased a 
blue coupe lined with white reps, so small 
that people compared it to one belonging 
to the most famous dwarf of the day, an 
insult about which we were troubled very 
little. A brown coupe lined with garnet 
succeeded the blue, and was replaced at a 
later date with one of the color of a crow's 
eye upholstered with deep blue ; for we 
luxuriated in carriages, in spite of being 
nothing but a poor scribbler, with no in- 
come stated in the big book, and no lega- 
cies left us for years back; and our po- 
nies, though nourished on literature, so to 
speak, with nouns for hay, adjectives in 
place of oats, and adverbs instead of straw, 



Horses. 131 

were none the less fat and glossy because 
of that. Alas, just then came, no one 
knew exactly why, the Revolution of Feb- 
ruary. Paving-stones were being dug up 
on all sides to serve patriotic ends, and 
the streets were no longer accessible for 
wheeled vehicles. We might easily have 
scaled the barricades with our agile ponies 
and their light equipage, but unluckily we 
had no credit left anywhere but at the 
cook-shop. Horses cannot be fed on roast 
chicken. The horizon was lowering with 
heavy black clouds, across which red light- 
nings flashed. Money took alarm, and 
made haste to conceal itself. The news- 
paper for which we wrote suspended pub- 
lication, and we thought ourselves fortu- 
nate when a purchaser turned up and took 
horses, harnesses, and carriages off our 
hands at a quarter of their value. It was 
a bitter grief to us to have them go, and 
we will not swear that a salt tear or two 



132 My Household of Pets. 

may not have dropped on the manes of 
Jane and Blanche as they were led away. 

They are driven past their old home oc- 
casionally by their new owner ; and always 
the light feet make an instant's pause un- 
der the windows, to testify that they have 
not forgotten the dwelling where they were 
once so cared for and so tenderly loved. 
Then we breathe a bitter and sympathetic 
sigh, and say in the depths of our heart, 
" Poor Jane ! Poor Blanche ! Are they 
happy ? " 

In the overwhelming of our tiny for- 
tunes theirs is the only loss which caused 
us a real regret. 



University Press : John Wilson & Son, Cambridge. 






^ 



